


The Third Wheel: Susan Lewis Versus the 'Date-Crasher'

by Kam14



Series: Love & Loss [7]
Category: ER (TV 1994)
Genre: Children, Coffee Shops, Dating, Divorce, F/M, Family, Loneliness, Online Dating, Post-Divorce, Third Wheels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:09:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27999537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kam14/pseuds/Kam14
Summary: Susan, who has now been living and working in Phoenix, Arizona for the past six months, expected to feel fulfilled because she is finally able to spend more time with her niece and sister. And she does; she is elated to be an Aunt who is always present for Suzie. However, in a romantic capacity, she feels desperately lonely and, as a result of her loneliness, turns to online dating. When she finally meets somebody and agrees to go on a date with them in person, however, there is a surprise visitor who manages to cause a stir and the date turns from bad to worse very, very quickly.
Relationships: Susan Lewis/James Riley
Series: Love & Loss [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2033827
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The Third Wheel: Susan Lewis Versus the 'Date-Crasher'

_You don't know how it feels  
To be outside the crowd  
You don't know what it's like  
To be left out  
And you don't know how it feels  
To be your own best friend on the outside looking in._

_(Extract from Jordan Pruitt’s song, ‘Outside Looking In’, 2007)._

**__ **

What a third wheel Susan had begun to feel like since moving to Phoenix. How ironic. She’d moved out there for the purpose of being able to spend more time with little Suzie and with Chloe, but that had been a bust because Chloe had revamped her life after the move. She worked constantly. She’d gotten a job at a call centre and was ascending in her role; set to climb all the way up to become the Company Director’s secretary, she said. Chloe’s personal life had taken a three-sixty too. She now had a devoted husband, Dale, who was also a responsible father figure to Suzie. She was doing well for herself and Susan was happy to finally see her sister overcome her issue with drug abuse. She really was. Truly. But between Chloe’s job and between her spending all of her leisure time with Dale and making up for the lost time she wished she could have spent with Suzie during working hours, Susan hardly saw Chloe at all. Whenever she did try to spend time with the three of them together, she felt like an observer looking in from the side-lines; a constant reminder that this was _Chloe’s_ family. So, she guessed that made her a fourth wheel, then. Of course, the only consolation was that she was able to spend every hour that she wasn’t working at her new hospital in Phoenix looking after little Suzie. That itself almost made all of the loneliness worthwhile.

For those first few weeks after moving to Phoenix, Susan could deal with that. This is exactly what she wanted; she wanted nothing more than to be with little Suzie when Chloe moved away. However, as the months went on, the fact that Susan had no real adult company aside from the few acquaintances she’d made at work began to weigh upon her mind. She had dated the teacher, of course, a few months back but both she and he had realised early in the relationship that, for various reasons, things weren't going to work out between them and they had both agreed to go their separate ways. Since then, she had been registered to an online dating site for a number of weeks now but felt guilty every time she even made it past entering her login details. The only person doing so made her think about was Mark and how she’d shouted to him from the train; told him that she _did_ love him. Susan had made her choice, though; she had been forced to choose between Mark and little Suzie and she had chosen the latter. Without regrets, might she add. That, nevertheless, did not take away from the fact that she needed a life outside of work; a life outside of the four walls of the apartment she had moved into after an extended stay at Chloe’s house whilst she investigated rental rates. It was for that reason Susan knew that it wasn’t a lack of love causing her to feel not quite fulfilled, but it was, instead, the lack of romance that she’d not realised she needed until now. Therefore, in order to fill that gap, she knew she had to at least give the ‘online thing’ a _try._

_Username. Password._ ‘Welcome back to Forget-Me-Not. We hope you find true love today’.

“Ugh”, Susan cringed whilst mock gagging. Much to her surprise, a message popped up almost immediately, as opposed to the usual drawn-out swiping process before receiving an uncomfortable exchange in her inbox from some creep who was probably a solid thirty years older than he claimed to be. “Probably just another one of those creeps”, she sighed as she rolled her eyes and hesitantly opened the message regardless of her suspicions.

_Hi, Susan (if I may)_ [Very polite; formal].

_My name is James Riley, I’m thirty-two and I also live in Phoenix, AZ._ [Huh. Local; not—seemingly, at least—a man as old as my dad. You don’t say, James?].

 _I moved here not long ago (two months exactly, in fact)_ [It’s as if the stars know when to align].

_and began working as a nurse at Trinity Hospital close to the centre of the city._ [Now, this is just becoming so coincidental that it’s humorous].

_If you were interested,_ [Consensual; that’s new by this site’s standards].

_I’d really like to meet you in person sometime. I guess that we are both looking for love, seeing as we’ve resorted to online dating,_ [Tell me about it].

 _but it’d be really nice to get to know each other and, you know, just see where things go from there._ [Please be cute, please be cute…oh my god, Susan, you are desperate].

Susan clicked at the top of the message to see a larger image of the sender’s profile picture.

“ _Very_ cute!”, she almost squealed. The man in the picture did, in fact, appear to be in his early thirties. He had an olive complexion, short, thick hair in a shade of deep chocolate brown, a wide, yet warm smile and a perfectly aligned set of bright white teeth. He donned a pair of what Susan would describe as ‘hipster glasses’, a half-rimmed frame in a tortoiseshell shade. His eyes were a striking blue-grey against his darker features and had a familiar quality that Susan couldn’t quite place her finger on. They had a kind look to them.

Susan, after attempting to talk herself out of responding to James’ message at all, finally managed to pluck up the courage not only to reply but to arrange to meet him for a coffee date the following week. She’d have a little time to prepare herself to get back into dating that way, or so she told herself. But the day of the date rolled around before Susan even felt like she’d had a chance to fully realise what she may be getting herself into. This could be a total bust. But Susan had been into taking chances recently, what with totally uprooting her life in Chicago and starting all over again in Arizona; something that, if you’d asked her whether she would do it a mere couple of years ago, her answer would have been a confident ‘never’. If she could do that despite the odds, she could take a chance on meeting a guy for a simple coffee date too.

But nothing was ever simple in Susan’s life; not even this date could be an exception to that rule. Susan arrived at the café exactly six minutes, noted as she glanced down at her watch nervously, before the time that she had planned to meet James. She picked a table tucked away in one corner of the room and waited. And waited. And waited. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, then, before she knew it, twenty-five. She’d been stood up. She sighed, rising to collect her belongings in preparation to leave the café once again. Then, just as she was about to swing her bag over her shoulder, Susan heard a small voice shout,

“Hey, Daddy! Is that lady over there your date? Is that Susan?”

Susan turned on her heel swiftly, now sporting a deeply furrowed brow. From the opposite side of the room, near to where the café’s entrance was situated, she saw a young girl—who looked to be around seven or eight years old—making her way towards her, followed by a man who looked identical to James’ profile picture on Forget-Me-Not.com.

“Hi, Susan. James. It’s so nice to meet you in person”, the approaching man extended his hand to shake Susan’s before handing her a small bunch of white flowers.

“Er…hi. It’s great to meet you too”, Susan shook James’ extended hand whilst trying—and failing—to hide her surprise at the situation. “These are lovely”, she smiled, gesturing to the flowers.

“My daughter, Lyla”, James told Susan, giving the young girl with long, brown hair and the same striking blue-grey eyes as her father a small nudge forwards, “do you want to say hello?”

Lyla stared intently at Susan for a brief moment and it seemed that she was about to speak. However, she did not and, in favour of introducing herself to Susan, chose to shift her attention towards the floor.

“I’m sorry I had to bring her along…not very romantic, I know”, James whispered, as he pulled Susan gently aside, “we had plans change at the very last minute”.

“Don’t worry about it”, Susan assured him, although she had to admit (at least to herself, if not to James) that she was rather taken aback. He hadn’t mentioned anything about having children.

“Lyla?”, James asked in an attempt to encourage his daughter to peel her eyes away from the floor. “Will you sit with Susan whilst I order our drinks?”

Lyla nodded reluctantly and then lowered herself into the chair opposite Susan, who also resumed her seat at the table.

“What’ll you have?”, James asked Susan who, after insisting that she would order and pay, finally gave up her stance and requested a cappuccino.

Once James had joined the queue to order his and Susan’s cappuccinos and Lyla’s orange juice, an awkward silence followed whilst Susan tried to think of what to say to the unamused child in front of her.

“That’s a nice bear”, she gestured towards the blue teddy that Lyla gripped tightly under one arm, “What’s her name?”

“Buddy. He’s a _boy_ ”, Lyla muttered, still choosing to look anywhere but at Susan.

“Oh, sorry”, Susan nodded before adding, “my niece, Suzie has a bear just like Buddy. Although she’s a baby, so her blue bear doesn’t have a name and hers is covered in crusty patches where she’s chewed on him”.

“I don’t like babies. They cry too much and it’s annoying”, Lyla scowled, narrowing her eyes.

“Okay, we have one cappuccino”, James announced upon his return to the table, placing the mug in front of Susan, “and another”, he continued, placing the second mug at the spot where he would sit next to Lyla, “and an orange juice”, he finished, placing the glass in front of a still-scowling Lyla and ruffling her hair. This, however, only seemed to irritate her even further.

“So, Susan”, James began, “you’re from Chicago, right? How long have you lived in Phoenix?”

“Chicago born and raised”, Susan smiled, reminiscing to herself about her home city, “and I moved to Phoe-”

“Daddy, I learned about the Chicago river last week in school”, Lyla interrupted before Susan could finish.

“Lyla, it’s not very polite to interrupt. Why don’t you let _Susan_ tell us all about Chicago? I’m sure she knows something very interesting about it after having grown up there”. He patted Lyla’s arm before pausing and turning his attention back to Susan. “I’m sorry about that. You were saying?”

“Oh, yeah. I moved to Phoenix around six months ago after my sister, her husband and my niece moved here for his job. It was pretty unplanned”, she admitted, wondering how much detail was too much detail for a first date.

Ultimately, she decided to keep her account brief and omit any mention of the post-traumatic stress she’d experienced in the aftermath of Chloe and, moreover, little Suzie’s departure so as not to alarm James. “I missed my niece too much and moved out here myself shortly afterwards”, she recounted before swiftly changing the topic. After all, it still hurt her deeply to think back to a time when she didn’t know when her next visit would be with the child whom she’d spent the best part of a year mothering. “Luckily I managed to find a job relatively quickly at Silverwell Hospital”.

“And you’re a doctor? In Emergency Medicine you said, right?”, James asked.

Before Susan could even begin to utter an answer, Lyla interrupted once again, this time to inform Susan that _her_ father was a nurse and that she had once been to the ER to get her arm casted after falling from a tree that she’d climbed in her garden.

“Lyla, please”, James sighed, evidently beginning to lose his patience.

“It’s fine, really”, Susan assured him once again. She knew how unpredictable adding children to certain scenarios could be at times. “And did your arm heal okay?”, she turned her attention to Lyla, who nodded without uttering another word.

“Still can’t keep her out of the trees, the little monkey she is”, James joked, and Susan laughed along too. Lyla, however, was far less amused. “Lyla, honey, why don’t you go and sit at that table over there where the colouring books and pencils are? Maybe you can draw a nice picture for Susan”, James suggested, pointing to a small table in another corner of the café near one of the fridges where cold soft drinks were being stored.

“Okay”, Lyla agreed all too readily, rising from her seat and making a beeline for the colouring pencils.

Once Lyla was out of earshot, James shook his head and sighed. “I really am very sorry about having to bring Lyla. She definitely hasn’t been very polite to you at all”.

“Really, it’s not a problem”, Susan moved her hands in a small waving motion, as if waving his comment away, “kids will be kids. If you don’t mind me asking though, why did you bring her with you? It’s not that I mind, believe me”, she clarified, “I’m just curious”.

“Her Mom was meant to have her today—we’re divorced and have joint custody, by the way, and it’s a long story—but she had to pick up a cover shift at work—she works for the police—and couldn’t take Lyla after all”, he explained.

Susan nodded in understanding. She _did_ understand all too well and didn’t want James to think otherwise. “I basically had to be mother to my niece for almost a year—also a _very_ long story—and the sheer panic I was faced with whenever I was asked to cover a shift at work on the last minute was unbelievable”.

James let out a chuckle. “So, I guess we’re both full of long stories, then?” Susan also let out a giggle. James seemed nice and, miraculously, she was actually enjoying herself.

At that moment, as if the young girl—who was evidently not a fan of Susan—knew at _precisely_ what moment to intervene and ruin the pair’s enjoyment, Lyla came running over to their table once more and thrust a haphazardly drawn picture into her father’s hands.

“That’s lovely, Lyla”, James exclaimed encouragingly, “Is it a picture for Susan?”

“ _No_! It’s a picture for _Mommy_ ”, she answered snappily, “Why would I draw a picture for _Susan_? _Susan_ isn’t my Mommy and she never will be! I don’t know why you couldn’t have just stayed with _my_ Mommy in the first place!”

“Lyla! That’s enough!”, James retorted firmly, raising his voice enough to sound stern yet not enough to be described as shouting. “I’m sorry. Will you excuse us for a moment?”, James asked, turning to Susan who nodded in reply.

Susan watched as James took Lyla outside and began to reprimand her for her inconsiderate behaviour. Yet again, Susan had found herself ‘third wheeling’ on _her own date._ It was at that moment that a very sudden, somewhat inexplicable wave of panic overcame Susan. She couldn’t do this. She had to spend half of her home life feeling like an outsider looking in on a family that wasn’t fully hers; she couldn’t do it here as well. Whilst Lyla and James were preoccupied, Susan made the decision to quietly collect her belongings and leave the café through the back exit which, very luckily for her, was open to the public as well as the baristas.

It wasn’t until Susan arrived home around forty-five minutes later that she questioned whether her decision to leave had been the wrong one. If the guilt she felt for having stood up her date over something that wasn’t really any fault of his own—granted, he could have had the courtesy to tell her that he had a child prior to meeting in person—wasn’t answer enough, the twisting of regret that she felt in the pit of her stomach told her that it had been wrong. Very wrong indeed. She should have given him a chance. She should have given herself a chance at happiness; finally. She could have had it all. She could call him, she thought. It might not have been too late to put today behind them; to meet again and start anew. She had been slumped on the settee, twiddling the phone between her fingers like a fidget toy for almost an hour now. She had the number memorised; all she had to do was dial it. And apologise. That was, if James were to pick up, although Susan wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t. After a further fifteen minutes of deliberation, she inhaled _very_ deeply, dialled James’ number, pressed the call button and waited, biting her lip nervously.

“Hello? Is that you, Susan?”, James’ voice sounded from the other end of the line, his tone one of justified confusion.

“Yeah, James. It’s me”, Susan sighed, “Look, I’m _so_ sorry about earlier. Will you let me explain?”

**Author's Note:**

> Life never does seem to be simple for Susan in the show itself and so, it only seemed fitting for this chapter of the series to inject a little drama into her life in Phoenix as I imagine it too. I've intentionally left it on a cliffhanger so that you can decide for yourself whether Susan and James will manage to start anew and whether their relationship will develop into anything further. (I personally think James seems like he'd be rather compatible with Susan, so I would like to imagine that they do manage to facilitate a second date, at least)! I hope you enjoyed reading my interpretation of Susan's early months in Arizona and, once again, many thanks to Zoë and M for being the most wonderful co-writers!


End file.
